13. Four Days Until Bonding
Chapter thirteen
Four Days Until Bonding
Carrson
Thomson and I wait for the New York police car with its sirens wailing to go past us. The van we’re in has fake plates, and no one’s looking for it, so we don’t break a sweat.
Cops aren’t what has us on edge tonight.
It’s the target.
“Damian Salvanti,” I read from the folder while Thomson fiddles with something in his lap.
Coiled wires and tiny propellers stick out of the apparatus, and for a second it looks like the helicopter that carried us into the city an hour ago.
We picked up the van a few blocks from the airport, keys under the seat where my father’s men left it.
“He’s going to be tricky,” Thomson says. “I can’t believe he breached that server. It’s one of our most locked-down systems. The tech team’s in an uproar, worried he planted a virus.”
“Did he?” I ask.
“They haven’t found anything yet.”
I look back at the photo clipped to the upper edge of Damian’s profile. Dark hair and icy blue eyes. A body built in layers, each muscle on top of the next.
I check the clock on the dashboard, just past ten p.m., which means Laurel will probably be asleep by the time I get this done and we fly back to Ashport.
I grit my teeth, picturing her inside the Manor without me there to keep watch.
My father is in that house, along with God knows how many other members of The Order.
Sam is with her, and I trust Sam more than I used to, but it does nothing to stop the unease crawling over my skin like ants.
Just because Laurel can protect herself doesn’t mean she should have to.
The thing in Thomson’s hand whirs to life. It’s as small as a fly and can flatten to the thickness of a credit card. A scouting drone with a camera mounted to its underside.
“I wish it wasn’t so loud,” Thomson murmurs, watching it with the pride of a man admiring his own child, which makes sense since he’s the one who invented it.
I crack the window. Thomson lifts his cupped palms, releasing it. The contraption wobbles a few times, then steadies and climbs to the roof of the building, where it’ll enter an air vent that leads to Damian’s living room.
No way are we going in blind. Thomson pulls the images up on his computer. I move closer so I can see.
“He’s got signal jammers all over the building. I had to bypass them before we could get eyes inside.” He taps through a series of commands.
On the screen, the walls of a square metal duct rush past in dull gray flashes as the drone winds deeper into the building, like a worm tunneling through packed earth.
It pops out into a dim room, the curtains drawn and every light switched off. According to the building blueprints, this should be the living room, but Damian has turned it into an office.
Three identical black desks form a U shape. Each holds four large monitors set in landscape mode, with hard drives lined up beneath them. Cables run through neat black sleeves along the floor instead of tangling underfoot.
Earlier, I teased Laurel that I knew what NASA headquarters looked like. Now I think I’m seeing it in person.
Most of the screens display code, data streams, or pale windows full of text too small for me to read, but several show security feeds: the building’s front entrance, the lobby, the elevator bank, and the hallway outside the apartment.
Damian is watching every entrance. Smart. It means he sees trouble before it reaches his door.
This is not the lair of some disorganized hacker. This is a command center. Every piece of equipment is cutting-edge, arranged so Damian can reach anything he needs without taking his eyes off a screen.
The only thing out of place is Damian himself.
He sits at the open end of the room in a rolling chair, positioned directly across from the front door.
A revolver rests in one hand, held low against his thigh.
More guns lie on the table beside him, arranged in a row from smallest to largest: a second pistol, a sawed-off shotgun, an AR-style rifle.
“Looks like he’s expecting us,” Thomson remarks dryly.
“Guess so.” I check the safety on my own gun, clicking it off, and pick up my knife, freshly sharpened, from the center console.
“Would be rude to keep him waiting.” I grin at my best friend, partly because my blood is pumping, that adrenaline high rushing through my system, and partly to reassure him.
He worries something bad will happen to me. I suppose if we do this often enough, eventually he’ll be right.
Not tonight, though.
Tonight Laurel waits for me back at the Manor and I’ll be damned if I don’t make it back to her.
“Hit the EMP,” I tell him as I slip out of the car, pulling the eyepiece down over one eye.
Thomson pushes a button, activating the electromagnetic pulse, and through the computer screen I hear Damian swear.
The lights along this block have gone dark, along with every backup system Damian thought would keep him safe.
His monitors are dead. His cameras are dead.
Whatever precautions he built into that command center, Thomson just rendered useless.
I turn on my eyepiece, and it syncs with the drone. Tinged green with night vision, I can see Damian has jumped up and stands with his gun extended. It wavers as he searches through the darkness.
He won’t see me coming.
I let out a satisfied sigh. I love it when a plan comes together. The apartment building is quiet as I take the stairs two at a time, passing no one on the way up. Outside Damian’s place, my fingers press against the earpiece that connects me to Thomson.
“I’m in position.”
From my jacket pocket, I take out the slim mechanical override Thomson handed me before we left. It settles over Damian’s lock with a faint click.
For a man who built an electronic fortress, Damian put an awful lot of faith in cameras, jammers, live feeds, and backup systems. With all that dead, the only thing standing between us is a standard deadbolt.
I engage the override.
A soft thunk sounds from the other side of the door.
“It’s unlocked,” I tell Thomson.
“Perfect.” Through the earpiece, I hear Thomson’s fingers moving over the keyboard. “Turning on the electrogenerator.”
“Done,” he declares a second later.
“Muting you now,” I tell him, my thumb poised over the button.
Thomson doesn’t ask why. We learned a long time ago that once I’m inside, I need silence. No voice in my ear competing with what’s in front of me.
“Be careful,” he says before I cut off the incoming channel. His voice disappears, but I leave my microphone live. If I go down, he’ll know exactly where to send help. Not that I’ve ever needed it before, and I don’t plan to start tonight.
I raise my foot and drive it into the door. The lock gives with a jolt, and it swings inward.
Damian shoots me.
Right in the chest.
Except, the gun stays silent in his hand. No bang. No flash. He brings it closer to his face, gaping at it.
“That’s not a very nice way to welcome a guest.” I stride into the room, closing the door behind me.
Without taking my eyes off him, I set a small lantern on the floor and nudge the switch with my boot. White light floods the space, and Damian flings up a hand to shield his eyes. When he finally looks at me, his face blanches.
“Oh, shit.” His eyes widen. “They sent you?”
“You know me?” I ask. The recognition sends a dark wave of satisfaction through me. There’s power in watching a man know exactly who’s come for him.
Damian raises the revolver and pulls the trigger again.
Click.
I laugh. “That won’t work.”
His stare darts from the weapon to me. “Why not?”
“We used an electrogenerator.”
“A what?”
“Electrogenerator.” I lift my gun slightly. “It changes the polarity in anything magnetic. Your gun, your bullets. They’re pulling toward each other now instead of doing what they’re supposed to.”
He turns the revolver over in his hand.
“The rounds are locked in the barrel,” I add. “You could stand there pulling the trigger all night. Nothing’s coming out.” I wave toward the other guns on his desk. “Those are dead too.”
He points to the gun I hold with its muzzle directed to the floor. “What about yours?”
“Nonmagnetic composite.” I hold it out so he can see. “The rounds too. They can kill you, though.”
Damian’s gaze moves over the weapon with interest.
“That’s clever,” he says.
I grin. “Thank you.”
“You’re still planning to shoot me.”
“Of course.”
He sets the now-useless revolver down.
Then he comes at me.
Damian crosses the space faster than a man his size should be able to move, one massive hand swatting my gun from my grip before his shoulder drives into my chest. The weapon skitters under his desk just as my back slams against the edge hard enough to rattle the monitors.
Pain flares along my ribs.
Well. That’s embarrassing.
Damian follows through with a fist to my side, all brute force.
I dodge before he can put his full weight behind the next one, but his knuckles clip my jaw.
The room pitches sideways. I brace one hand against the desk, tasting blood where my teeth cut into the inside of my cheek.
The coppery tang wakes the oldest part of me, the one my father and his instructors taught to come alive at the test of my strength against another man’s.
In a fight, my body moves without hesitation, and it feels good enough that, for years, I let that feeling answer every question about who I was.
I catch his wrist when he reaches for me again. Bracing myself against the desk, I shove hard enough to force him back a step.
“You know,” I say, breathing quicker than I’d like, “most people say thank you when I show them something cool.”
Damian bares his teeth. “I am impressed.”
Then he swings again. This time I’m ready. I turn with the punch instead of meeting it, using his size to my advantage. Without me to stop him, his momentum sends him sailing past to slam into the wall. I jab him hard in the ribs as he passes by, and he grunts from the impact.
“You can’t kill me,” he says, turning back around.
“I assure you, I can.”